Judging by the direction from which the voices came, the speakers were hidden by still another turn in the defile.  A few more steps brought eye as well as ear back to the living world with the sight of a girl seated on a bowlder.  He could see nothing of her face except the cheek, which was brown, and the tip of a chin, which he guessed was oval, and her hair, which was dark under her hatbrim and shimmering with gold where it was kissed by the rays of the sun.  An impression as swift as a flash of light could not exclude inevitable curiosity as to the full face; a curiosity emphasized by the poised erectness of her slender figure.

The man was bending over her in a familiar way.  He was thirty, perhaps, in the prime of physical vigor, square-jawed, cocksure, a six-shooter slung at his hip.  Though she was not giving way before him, her attitude, in its steadiness, reflected distress in a bowstrung tremulousness.  Suddenly, at something he said which the easy traveller could not quite understand, she sprang up aflame, her hand flying back against the rock wall behind her for support.  Then the man spoke so loud that he was distinctly audible.

“When you get mad like that you’re prettier’n ever,” he said.

It was a peculiar situation.  It seemed incredible, melodramatic, unreal, in sight of the crawling freight train far out on the levels.

“Aren’t you overplaying your part, sir?” the easy traveller asked.

The man’s hand flew to his six-shooter, while the girl looked around in swift and eager impulse to the interrupting voice.  Its owner, the color scheme of his attire emphasized by the glare of the low sun, expressed in his pose and the inquiring flicker of a smile purely the element of the casual.  Far from making any movement toward his own six-shooter, he seemed oblivious of any such necessity.  With the first glimpse of her face, when he saw the violet flame of her anger go ruddy with surprise and relief, then fluid and sparkling as a culminating change of emotion, he felt cheap for having asked himself the question—­which now seemed so superficial—­whether she were good-looking or not.  She was, undoubtedly, yes, undoubtedly good-looking in a way of her own.

“What business is it of yours?” demanded the man, evidently under the impression that he was due to say something, while his fingers still rested on his holster.

“None at all, unless she says so,” the deliverer answered.  “Is it?” he asked her.

After her first glance at him she had lowered her lashes.  Now she raised them, sending a direct message beside which her first glance had been dumb indifference.  He was seeing into the depths of her eyes in the consciousness of a privilege rarely bestowed.  They gave wing to a thousand inquiries.  He had the thrill of an explorer who is about to enter on a voyage of discovery.  Then the veil was drawn before his ship had even put out from port.  It was a veil woven with fine threads of appreciative and conventional gratitude.